The present invention relates to utility computing. In a utility computing environment, utilization is improved by increasing the availability of servers and other computing resources to more people and their applications. Instead of sitting idle for a single application, these resources are used to execute programs for many users. Information technology infrastructure costs are reduced as computer resources are not purchased to only solve a single complex task for a department or division in a company. Instead utility computing allows the computer resources to be used by many different people during both peak periods and periods otherwise considered off-peak. Properly implemented, utility computing reduces the need for more resources as existing resources can be shared.
Utilization efficiency in the utility computing facility depends to a large extent on governing access to the pools of resources associated with the utility computing facility. It also depends on the ability of the system to accommodate the application demand and usage requirements in the future. Unfortunately, existing conventional systems have not been able to properly monitor or anticipate access to these pools of resources and deal with the relatively complex demand patterns that may be present in an enterprise or organization.
A number of conventional solutions only assure users and applications that a “best effort” will be made to allocate certain computing resources. The best effort approach does not allow for higher assurances if the customers are interested in higher availability of resources.
Other solutions allow customers to make monetary bids on computing utilities thereby indicating a desired quality of service or service assurance when using the resources. These systems are often driven by service level agreements or SLAs with higher paying customers receiving higher levels of service and resources. It remains unclear; however, what quality of service customers entering lower monetary bids are provided given the focus on this higher paying customer base.
Yet other utility computing solutions gauge access to pools of resources based upon transaction response times for different applications. The systems managing resources in this manner are complicated. They tie quality of service to the responsiveness of a particular application rather than the overall responsiveness of resources in the computing utility. This approach to resource management may improve performance for certain applications but overall may not improve the performance or efficiency associated with the computing utility.
As companies cut costs in information technology budgets, there is parallel demand to improve the information technology infrastructure for people to work more efficiently. Large server farms and clusters of computers can be used to improve the utilization of computing resources in an enterprise or company if utility computing is deployed effectively. Indeed, for certain applications having predictable execution schedules and demand requirements the conventional utility computing environments previously described are more useful. For example, conventional utility computing environments are more useful for batch programs as they are scheduled to run in advance and have certain predictable demand requirements during execution.
Unfortunately, implementing utility computing for business applications that are critical to the operation of a company is a much more difficult task. These business applications are generally very different in nature and have non-uniform computing needs. If a computing utility is unable to provide the necessary resources, business processes may not be performed resulting not only in delayed productivity but reduced business transactions and lost revenue. Improved controls for computing utility environments are needed to efficiently run business, engineering, and other applications having less predictable demand or schedules for demand yet require precise levels of assurances regarding access to resources.
Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements.